I personally love apps that use our phones’ sensors, such as the camera and the microphone, to automatically identify stuff for us. Shazam and SoundHound are good examples, as well as Google Goggles, Plink Art (now a part of Goggles), VideoSurf, and certain augmented reality apps such as Layar.

Another application that now can be added to the list is Vivino Beta. It performs a pretty niche task, since it identifies bottles of wine. When you take a photo of a wine label, the app will try to find a match in its database containing around 400,000 types of wine, and then send you the results.

There is also a social aspect to Vivino, since it lets you share and rate the wines you come across. Are there any connoisseurs of wine out there, like Miles in the excellent movie Sideways, that love this app’s concept? Remember that Vivino still is in beta, so there might be a few glitches here and there.